Diminishing Legos
Sunday, February 10, 2019 at 10:00PM Did you see The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part this weekend? It's actually the fourth animated LEGO feature, the first becoming an unexpected blockbuster five years ago... But returns have been diminishing so perhaps they've overestimated the demand with their intense supply?
| Weekend Box Office Estimates February 8th-10th (ESTIMATES) 🔺 = New or Expanded Theater Count / ★= Recommended |
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| W I D E 800+ screens |
PLATFORM / LIMITED excluding prev. wide |
 Lego Movie Part 2 |
 Oscar Shorts Program |
| 1 🔺 The LEGO Movie Part 2 $34.4 *NEW* |
1🔺 Oscar Nominated Short Films $912k *NEW* Oscar Chart ★ |
| 2 🔺 What Men Want $19 *NEW* |
2🔺 Cold War $500k (cum. $2.8) Review, ASC Winner, Biggest Foreign Hits ★ |
| 3 🔺 Cold Pursuit $10.8 *NEW* |
3 Free Solo $307k (cum. $15.9) Review, Biggest Doc Hits ★ |
| 4 The Upside $7.2 (cum. $85.8) Review, Podcast |
4 Ek Ladki Ko Dekha $250k (cum. $1.0) |
| 5 Glass $6.4 (cum. $98.4) Review |
5🔺 Capernaum $140k (cum. $734k) Interview, Podcast, Foreign Film Nominee ★ |
...but returns have been diminishing so perhaps they've overestimated the demand with their intense supply?
What Men Want, savaged by critics, and Cold Pursuit, perhaps thrown off by the Liam Neeson controversy, did okay but will word of mouth be there? The big story, instead is the continued great holds for crowd pleasers The Upside and Green Book, which are both off less than 20% in their 5th and 13th weekends respectively which is quite rare for wide releases.
In other news Cold War is looking like it will easily pass the Oscar-winning Ida's gross, to become the biggest Polish hit in quite some time at the arthouse. Its Oscar competitor Lebanon's Capernaum, is already Nadine Labaki's second biggest hit in the states (after her debut film Caramel) and looks likely to cross the $1 million mark in a week or two. In other words this is an unusually popular year for the foreign film category as you can see on our massive box office chart of the past 18 years of that category.
Struggling for attention this week was the long delayed release of Everybody Knows, Asghar Farhadi's latest starring Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem which earned $75,000 at four theaters.
FINALLY we have to note that the annual theatrical package of Oscar nominated shorts (split into four programs, two for the doc shorts since they're always long) did nearly a million in its first weekend. This has become a popular tradition each year. Why can't the Academy see that the answer to making the below the line categories more popular is to invest in audience outreach and inclusion in all categories; this program has definitely upped the profile of these categories.
Reader Comments (28)
I love watching the nominated shorts. Although warning for this year (even more than other years): child abuse/endangerment is almost relentless: 4/5 live action shorts focus on this in some way—not always sensitively. My vote is for Fauve followed by Marguerite.
I saw both COLD PURSUIT and WHAT MEN WANT and was surprised at how much I liked them both.
I haven’t seen What Men Want but to say it was “savaged by critics” with 47% RT and 51 metacritic is absurd. Calm yourself and stop exaggerating
Too bad. I liked the Lego Movie and thought Lego Batman was the best Batman related film since The Dark Knight. Maybe Chris Pratt getting with Ahnuld’s daughter pissed people off? Or maybe Lego movies are just too strange a concept to really latch on. And did anyone else assume that What Men Want would just be 90 mins of Taraji being bombarded with thoughts of “titties, titties, titties” from men’s minds or was it just me...
NIc -- funnily enough i meant to change that sentence after i looked at the scores but the reviews i read were savage ;)
I saw High Flying BIRD and LOVED it. I was expecting great direction from Soderbergh of course but the highly literate and deep screenplay was a plesant surprise; I loved how unapologetically black it was. Andre Holland is great as the always-in-control lead but all of the supporting women give great performances as well.
The first great movie of 2019 and it was on NETFLIX.
I saw Lego Movie 2. I did not enjoy it as much as the first. I am puzzled about it's message.
(spoiler) At first it seemed to be saying don't trust those leaders who put on smiles and tell you they want the best, Lucy was the hero to be sceptical. I though this was a good message for adults thinking of political & business leaders and for children who might be approached by people who intend harm. But then it turned around and everyone can be friends and Lucy was harsh and unfriendly to not trust. I thought it was a bit dark for the young children in the audience who have probably not seen Mad Max Fury Road but they laughed when the star chucked up glitter.
Right now, I'm watching Fyre and so far... it's fucking hilarious. Oh, I hope Billy McFarland rots in prison and have his stupid metallic cards be thrown at him for all eternity. And please, put his token Ja Rule in prison too and be labeled a has-been 4 life.
I cringe everytime "Green Book" is called "crowd pleaser." While some folks are enjoying it (and it is making money), Black critics, and Black folks in general, have been really clear that "Green Book" is not a pleasant film for them to sit through.
Maybe call it "heartwarming," or an "easy drama," but it just isn't a crowd pleaser.
Joe: as someone who saw Green Book at a sold out screening at the Elgin Theater in Toronto, a theater that seats almost 1500 people, and heard pretty much everyone in the audience responding to every joke, saying "aww" at every moment that the film intended and breaking into thunderous applause throughout the screening and during the Q&A (for which a large percentage of the audience stayed), I can tell you, it's a crowdpleaser. A crowdpleaser doesn't mean that the film pleases everyone, it means that it's a film that plays better when you're watching it with a crowd, and Green Book very much is that (whatever issues people have with it, it's very well paced and it hits its comedic and emotional targets, achieving the reactions it meand to provoke, or at least this has been the experience whenever I see this movie with an audience).
Joe -- but any film that drops less than 20% each week is pleasing crowds or it wouldn't be holding so well. So few films have word of mouth buzz that strong. I get your point but I also think the internet makes us all think people think more monolithically than they actually do. Some high profile black celebrities love it (Octavia Spencer, Harry Belafonte, Quincy Jones) and the crowd I saw it with in Middleburg (very mixed crowd at a festival run by a black woman) gave it a standing ovation. One black voter I talked to at an Oscar party told me she wanted Viggo to win (which honestly surprised me).
These are all anecdotal things but I dont think it's as cut and dry as the internet thinks in terms of who likes it and who is offended by it.
Bear in mind I'm not a big fan of the picture but I just haven't seen much of the internet hatred for it out in the actual world. Same goes for Bohemian Rhapsody I guess which I think is straight up terrible but everyone outside the internet seems to just love it (so perplexing!)
Chris Pratt made some noise about Ben Schwartz getting an Oscar nom for his voice performance in "Lego Movie 2" and I just laughed my face off. I love Ben Schwartz, but that is not happening.
No movies this weekend but I’ve been catching up on the new season of FRANKIE & GRACE. Looooved seeing Josh Cooke and Angelique Cabral pop up, plus the returns of Marsha Mason and Scott Evans. Also, how could I forget the state of undress that Mark Deklin was in!?
The Lego Movie was a novelty. It was excellent and special because it was original.
It lost that edge when WB started farting them out every year.
Hearts Beat Loud, with Nick Offerman. So sweet and refreshing, and I'm glad that stars like Toni Collette and Ted Danson are willing to do cameos in films like this.
Two things: made me sad to see what happens to small business owners (even fictional ones) and Kiersey Clemons and Sasha Lane are wonderful. Need to catch up with American Honey, Lane's debut.
Went to see If Beale Street weren’t So Boring. I actually nodded off when the main character invited his buddy over for beers. Everything in this film moved Too Slow. As for the RKing hype-I really didnt believe the Puerto Rico sequence, though I did like her talk with the ‘accuser.’ I chuckled in the hallway when I overheard a patron tell her movie companion ‘I really couldn’t wait for this movie to end.’
If I got to vote-have to say that my selection would go to RWeisz. That ‘supporting’ role ran circles around the RKing role. You couldn’t wait for another RW entrance to see her reactions to the lastes triangle develipments. In contrast, you couldn’t wait for RK to return to energize the amateurish acting, wake up the audience and remind them of the hype that led them into their seats...
Saw Lego Movie 2 and quite enjoyed it. I don't know why you would cast Tiffany Haddish in a family film (you can FEEL her reigning herself in), but I was very impressed with her singing - and that it was a musical at all! BUT IT IS! Of course it's not as good as the first, but it is still fun, and has more creativity in single frames than a lot of films do in their entire run-times.
Saw LEGO MOVIE 2 which was a fun diversion, but yeah it's messaging is confusing. Tiffany Haddish for MVP though.
But Netflix is where it's at. I binged RUSSIAN DOLL (amazing!) late last week, SEX EDUCATION (very good!) this weekend, and started the new season of ONE DAY AT A TIME.
I am still missing ROMA because I keep thinking I'll find the energy to go see it a theater, but I might just bite the bullet and see it at home.
Saw the Oscar nominated Documentary Shorts. My favorite by far was Period. End of Sentence, which really was the only one to cover new ground. I mean, how many movies about female empowerment by demystification of menstruation in rural India are there out there, anyway? I also saw The Ballad of Buster Scruggs which I hated hated hated. Every one of its six stories. Easily one of the worst of the year and its screenplay nomination over The Death of Stalin, Leave No Trace, Burning, etc., is an absolute disgrace.
I agree with MDA. Soderbergh feels very underrated at this point. I am looking forward to seeing him team with Meryl later this year (to think that he is directing two movies in 2019 - his output is extraordinary).
I also caught up with Boy Erased, which was fine (Kidman and Hedges were very good as always), but inferior to The Miseducation of Cameron Post - Miseducation was better at driving home the absurdity of the situation while not sacrificing any of the tragedy of the kids' circumstances, and it made for a more enjoyable (and even edifying, from this straight's perspective) movie.
Meanwhile, I am whittling down my list of Best Actress winners I still need to see, and I watched The Good Earth. Woof. Aside from the yellowface, it has aged very poorly. To think Luise Rainer won her second consecutive Oscar against Irene Dunne in The Awful Truth and Stanwyck in Stella Dallas - neither of whom ever won.
Live action shorts. They should have just given us all bats to beat the crap out of each other in the theater. It would have been more enjoyable than sitting through those shorts. Why, every year, do they all have to involve children in the utmost of peril? This year is the bleakest ever. I won't be watching them again. That being said, Madre was the best one IMO.
Animated shorts. I loved Weekends, but Bao will probably win (Pixar domination!).
What Men Want. It is no Oscar-winner, but it was totally fine. It is entertainment, not art. I appreciate Taraji P. Henson. And this was a good palate cleanser to the Oscar season.
Also thanks for the heads up on the live action shorts. I usually try to watch at least one shorts category every year, but these comments here and others online is making me lean towards skipping or just watching the animated shorts. THEY are fine right and not too depressing?
@ Ryan T: The animated shorts are good. Definitely choose them over the live action shorts.
I saw "Lego 2." Not bad, but I am finished with seeing movies in 3D. Headache inducing. Also, I caught the animated shorts. All good, but "Weekend" is the stand out.
Did anyone see "The Wandering Earth?" Pretty good popcorn movie.
Just to confirm that even for devotees of the form, the Live Action Shorts were violent, sadistic, and clearly curated by Lars Von Trier. There was one lovely short ("Marguerite" -- try to catch it in some other format). Other than that, two featured child deaths (and a third featured a maybe-dead child), and two featured children killing others. Many patrons in my screening just walked out somewhere around the Irish child-murderer snuff film. The whole experience was nightmare-inducing.
"Fyre" on Netflix is the best movie I've seen in a long time. I love how McFarland made a fool of all those influencers more bad cheese sandwiches for them all
I finally saw The Wife, which I liked. The film held my attention and was better than I expected it to be, frankly. Close was quite good, but I was pleasantly surprised by Pryce. The actors who played the younger versions of Joe and Joan were pretty flat and unconvincing, though.
I've now seen the 5 Best Actress nominees. Would Close be my choice to win? Not really. Of the nominees, I'd put Coleman first and McCarthy second, but Close would be a worthy winner. She's not one of my all-time favorites or anything, so I don't think think I share the level of excitement at her possibly winning that some on this board have. That said ... well, she's a legend. If some of my never-won-before favorites were suddenly up for an Oscar later in their careers and were expected to win, I'd be enthusiastic.
Caught Widows this weekend - really enjoyed it -
I was worried b/c it seemed to get a lot of negative reviews...but definitely could see why Elizabeth Debicki was Best in Show...surprised she didn't get some awards recognition....